Choosing a different OS

Hi , I have a compaq 6720s with intel celeron 1.86 Ghz , 1 gb ram and intel mobile chipset 965 . I currently have windows xp but it still moves slowly when it comes for multitasking or runing more complex programs. Iuse this laptop for microsoft office, codeblocks and multimedia . And since XP is very vulnerable now, can I install a version of linux that will make the experience better or should I just keep XP instead ? If yes then what is the best linux version for my system?

What do you use office for? Is it just personal use or are you sharing what you work on to other people or collaboratively editing Office documents that you receive? You won't be running MS Office on any linux, so you'd have to use something like OpenOffice or LibreOffice or even Google Docs.

This site has some good lightweight linux distributions and I think that if you are going to continue to use that computer that going with linux is the safest thing to do from a security standpoint. Of those on that page I'd recommend Lubuntu or Puppy Linux.

It is important to understand that Linux is not Windows, and there will be a learning curve. Most people that try Linux bail at some point on that curve.

It is a good decision to move to Linux. I recommend Ubuntu. Linux takes some learning though; it is not plug and play unfortunately. But rest assured, all it takes is a simple google search and there will always be something to help. You can also ask us on TS.

As was said by @JC713 it will differently run faster with Linux Ubuntu I would also recommend upgrading the ram. The maximum amount of ram the HP Compaq 6720s could take is 4gb which is plenty enough for personal use and light gaming if that's what your in to. with linux it should run like it was fresh out the box I would recomend http://goo.gl/rlZL3s I say this becuase I have personaly used this when I was in the your position with a slow Windows XP Laptop and by installing new ram and and Linux Ubuntu This soon solved the problem.

Another alternative if you didn't want to go down the root of installing Linux or upgrading the ram is by do a fresh install of Windows XP this could slightly speed the laptop up.

As was said by @JC713
Another alternative if you didn't want to go down the root of installing Linux or upgrading the ram is by do a fresh install of Windows XP this could slightly speed the laptop up.

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I considered suggesting that as well, but you still can't ever get around the issue that XP is no longer receiving updates.

You could give Linux Mint DE (Debian Edition) with MATE a try. It does better supporting older H/W (e.g., Intel M series chips - non-PAE). It also supports rolling updates, so no need for re-installs whenever a new release of a Linux distro comes out. I used Ubuntu until 11.04, when it switched to the Unity desktop environment (too much like Windows 8 for my taste). It also installs LibreOffice (a good Windows Office replacement) and WINE for running Windows programs natively.

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Xubuntu (available from here: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/trusty/release/). The system requirements for this distro are minimal, and it's particularly great if you even need to work on an instance remotely (for servers as well - where a GUI is needed). It's very light and is built on Ubuntu 14.04! =)

I use windows 7 and my computer is Toshiba Satellite A200 (that is getting slower and slower and can't run any games at all atm, only League of Legends with graphics at minimum). Just asked about the operating system because I never tried other than windows vista and 7.